A Mum's Life

The following is a guest post is written by my good friend – and mother of two; Kate (6 months) and Toby (6 years) – Maria Green.

Today – September 16 – marks Working Parents Day; an annual event which recognises the great efforts of mums and dads everywhere that are in employment, despite having a little one (or two) to run around after.

Juggling a family and work can be difficult for anyone, but I would argue it is particularly hard for mothers who work from home. More often than not, male breadwinners work away from the home environment but many mummies – like me – operate home businesses in order to add to the household income, without being too far away from the baby, or the cooker and washing machine (ah, the curse of traditional gender roles!)

I have my own cake making business. I make good use of the internet to promote my services, and regularly use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to find new clients. However, due to my housewife-commitments, I do not get to conduct as much offline promotion as I would like. Over the years though, I have adopted a number of leaflet-distribution methods for ensuring awareness of my business in the offline world.

If you are a home-business mum, the following tips might help you to promote your own business offline, without having to hire extra hands…

#1: Target OAP Community Centres

This might seem like an obvious tip but in my experience, these days many local business promoters forget about advertising within community centres. I never originally considered the older folk that spend much time at these establishments to be the primary target consumers for my business, but figured “Why not?” one day when I was passing one during a school-run. It turns out this demographic has much disposable income – not to mention and impressive number of cake-eating family members and grandchildren!

Leaving the house during the day can be difficult for me at times, since doing so can interfere with my 6 month-old daughter’s routine and cause her to incessantly howl as a result. However, once a month I do get in my car and visit nine local (and wider-local) community centres with Kate in tow. Making this effort to top up the pile of flyers in each centre and promote my latest discounts/offers has proved very fruitful. My driving route between these centres is planned carefully, so that I can visit all nine in less than two hours.

Even better; I have secured myself an excellent reputation for my cakes, as a result of volunteering to bake without charge for charitable events held at these centres. Leaving a handful of my business leaflets or cards on the table next to my cupcakes, Chelsea buns and Victoria sponges has seen me secure additional business, which I may have otherwise missed out on.

#2: Never Doubt the Power of School

Many would consider the task of dropping off and picking up my son Toby from primary school each day a chore, but I have long considered the task a business opportunity!

Toby’s best friend celebrated his 6^th birthday last year, and so I whipped up a batch of very attractive cupcakes in celebration. The school isn’t allowed to give its students sweets without the permission of parents, and I decided to use this to my advantage. I boxed each cake individually and every child was given one to take home with them at the end of the school day (if mum and/or dad said it was OK). Each box also contained one of my glossy business cards, so the parents would know exactly where the beautiful, edible-glitter decorated treat had come from. It was not long until I started receiving catering requests for the other kids’ birthday parties!

I have also baked a number of cakes free of charge for several money-raising events held by the school and this has helped to spread word about my culinary services and skills.

#3: Make Use of Flyering Friends

Not every home-business mum will have friends that deliver local newspapers or product catalogues locally, but if you do this can prove to be very useful for your own promotion.

When I heard that my sister’s son had secured himself a paper round, I asked him if he would mind dropping one of my leaflets through each letterbox when completing his round. He kindly agreed, as did my friend Sarah; an Avon representative.

You’d be surprised how many cake requests I get as people read the headlines or pick themselves out a new lipstick! I do limit this method to one day in each month only though – I don’t want to bombard people or receive any complaints!

#4: Always Have Promotional Materials to Hand

Again, this might seem like an obvious tip. However, I cannot count the number of times I have found myself in a situation which presents an opportunity to promote my services, only to have no leaflets or business cards on my person.

In these situations, I have recited the digits of my telephone number which have then been scrawled down or saved on the potential-customer’s mobile phone. I much prefer the professional image that handing over an expertly designed flyer or business card gives. As such, I try to make a habit of keeping some promotional materials in the glove box of my car – and in my handbag – at all times.

If you are seeking a professional flyer printing service to aid your business promotion, Maria Green – the author of this post – recommends you visit http://www.solopress.com/leaflet-printing/

I am a self-confessed shopaholic – it’s dreadful. It really is. I can’t go anywhere without buying something, anything! And it really can be anything. I just convince myself that I ‘need’ it and make the purchase, getting a little rush of shopaholic-style adrenaline. I work in a town centre, which is lethal for me. I can easily take a trip to Boots…..£50 quid gone…..just like that.

We went to a market the other week, it was an awful market, full of stalls for dog food and toys, DIY stalls, awful market clothes – you get the picture. Being the shopaholic I am, I bought myself some ‘garden shoes’. Garden shoes!! Honestly, what was I thinking?

1. I am not over 60.

2. I have PLENTY of shoes that I could wear out in the garden.

3. Who really wears garden shoes anyway.

They are basically a really cheap pair of crocs. And at £5 I needed them, as urm…..garden shoes. When I got them home, I did have a little chuckle to myself and made myself walk around the garden in them, just to say I’d worn them.

Anyway, the reason for my post was to showcase my purchase of the week. This week I ventured into town in my lunch hour and made my way to H&M to stock up on some new clothes for my Little Man.

So my *Star Buy Of The Week** is…..

Red Skinny Chinos – £5.99 from H&M – Size 2-3 years

Bargin….and also SUPER cute. The Little Man is so rocking the look.

Thanks for reading…….AML! x

Travelling with babies and toddlers on a plane isn't as bad as you may think!

We have taken the Little Man on a couple of long haul holidays in his short little life, so I think I’m pretty qualified to give some tips on travelling with a baby/toddler on a plane. Were we mad? Not really! It’s not as bad as you may think. But you need to be prepared – and then some! For us, it was so much easier when he was a baby, rather than a toddler. As soon as he was walking we had our work cut out a bit more. We nickname him our Pocket Rocket, as he’s got way too much energy and is pretty fast on his feet, so having to sit on a 12 hour flight was always going to be tough for him, but I think we all did pretty well. I did feel really nervous beforehand though. A couple of glasses of wine after take off helped a bit too!

The best thing you can do it be prepared and have lots of tricks up your sleeve to keep the entertainment going, more so for toddlers!

Travelling with a baby

The first holiday was to Boston, USA. It was a 7-8 hour flight and he was 12 months old. Here are my tips…

1. If possible try and get the bulkhead seats, so there is room for your little one to crawl around or just sit and play.
2. Get an isle seat, so you can easily get up and down without having to keep pushing past people.
3. Get them changed into a clean nappy, vest and baby grow just before you get on the flight, so they are super comfortable. Layers are good!
4. Give them a milk feed at take off.
5. Walk around with them as much as possible during the flight – that will be good for you and them!
6. A few of their favourite toys, we had the magnetic cars from ELC.
7. Favourite books, puppet books and some new books.
8. Lots of changes of clothes and plenty of wipes.
9. Disposable bibs (The Pound Shop do these as a pack of 10)
10. We took the Ella’s Kitchen pouches of food incase he didn’t eat anything on the plane. They are resealable do are ideal.
11. Snacks – bread sticks, rice cakes.

Don't under estimate being prepared!

Travelling with a toddler

The second holiday was to California. The flight was 11 hours and the Little Man was 21 months.

Here are some ideas to take on the plane…

1. A couple of new toys wrapped up, so when the boredom starts to kick in, then to open something new will keep them occupied and interested for a while longer!
2. Flash cards and books.
3. DVD player – although there are cartoons and films, if they like anything in particular then this can help. Toy Story was our saving grace!
4. Ice cubes in a cup from the flight attendants.
5. Masking tape and a pen – it’s ideal to draw on and just stick!!
6. Stickers and sticker books.
7. Crayons and colouring books.
8. iPad/tablet, or iPhone with flashcards. The Elias range of apps for babies are brilliant – they are a interactive flash cards.
9. Lots of snacks.
10. Disposable bibs (The Pound Shop do these as a pack of 10)
11. Straws.
12. Favourite blanket/soft toy,
13. Really comfy clothes, layers are best. Take a  few changes of clothes on board with you along with plenty of wipes.

Masking tape - not an obvious choice but a saviour all the same!

Another essentials that we found really useful on holiday:

1. Travel seat (we use this now at home instead of a high chair, so a great investment).

2. Lightweight Silvercross Pushchair with travel bag.

3. Blackout UV pushchair shade – was ideal when the Littleman needed to sleep out and about and we didn’t have to worry about him being in the sun.

If you have any other tips, I’d love to hear them – Good luck with your travels!
Thanks for reading….AML x

10 Things I Learnt From My Mum

Thank you Mum.

Oh, I have one more……11. Obsession for buying clothes! I know that’s 11. But who cares. 

Thanks for reading….AML x

OK, so I have set up a blog. Currently I don’t really know what I am doing or how WordPress works, but that is the whole idea. I am here to learn. First and foremost I want to create a web log of all the things I like to do in my life and share it with my friends and other mums around the world. I guess it will be a bit like Facebook, but just for my mummy friends. Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about loads of ideas on blog posts and am really excited about writing them.

Secondly, I am here to learn about social media, SEO and blogging and I think the best way to learn is putting the theory into practise! With the help of my friends at work, YouTube tutorials and a bit of hard work thrown in, hopefully it will turn out ok!

I don’t know when I am going to find the time to do this, but here goes…

PS. If you want to know a bit more about me and what my blog will be about then come and read About Me here.

Thanks for reading…..AML x